THREE recent obituaries in The Times have raised again the issue of who should and should not merit this distinction. The obit eight days ago of the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi brought only two complaints; but they followed hard on the heels of Alistair Cooke, who wrote: “Recently an obituary appeared of Richard McIlkenny, an Irish republican and one of the Birmingham Six, and a full page was devoted to Denis Donaldson, Irish terrorist turned police informer. What criteria are used in choosing such people for inclusion?”
By way of response Ian Brunskill, the obituaries editor, recalled two articles printed in The Times in recent years. I quote from both, as their arguments still hold good.
In 2001 Brian Macarthur wrote in his Paper Round column: “There was a brief moment of alarm on the Times backbench on Sunday when the night editor noticed that an obituary was being published of a criminal — Muhammad Atef, the terrorist who planned the September 11 atrocities. We didn’t publish obits of criminals, he said. It was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand had decided. The Times’s policy has been modified. Obituaries of criminals are now published if it is judged that they have helped to shape the world we live in or affected its political history.
“Those who complained were told by Ian Brunskill, obituaries editor, that the purpose of the obituaries page was not to honour the great and the good (though that obviously is one part of its job) but to record ‘significant lives’. Atef’s actions had led directly to one of the most intensive military campaigns of recent years, he said; to the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan; to a profound reappraisal of the relations between Islam and other faiths; and to an international diplomatic realignment on a scale not seen since the Second World War. So Atef had his obituary, as in the past did Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Mussolini, the Ceausescus and Pol Pot. So too did Britain’s spies and traitors.”
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And in a media page article in 2003, Ian Brunskill himself wrote: “Who merits an obituary in The Times? Well, there are German politicians whose careers end in scandal; Bosnian Serb generals indicted for war crimes; abstract painters; blues guitarists; rock keyboard players; brigadiers who won two DSOs in the push towards the Rhine; Italian cardinals; Welsh cathedral deans who should have been bishops but weren’t; judges; darts players; journalists; US Secretaries of State; devisers of fiendish chess problems; scientists; historians and colonial administrators who collected stamps.
“That, at any rate, is the answer this week, when all of these have featured in our columns. If they have anything in common, it is that they led lives that others might want to read about. Stricter, more hierarchical approaches to selection have been tried: no parochial clergy, no military men below the rank of brigadier, and definitely no crooks. It doesn’t work. Too many interesting lives go unrecorded. We miss the chance to tell tales that will never be told elsewhere.
“We didn’t do the Krays, and I wish we had, as the social history of postwar Britain is incomplete without them. Anyone who may be said to have shaped our world has a place on the obituaries page.” So if you aspire to take your own place in this immortal pantheon, start shaping.